Why I’m not going to NaNo this year

I follow a bunch of writers on Google+ who are all feverishly writing as we speak. They’re all on the NaNoWriMo bandwagon – National Novel Writing Month, for those of you who are unaware. Every November, writers sign up with the goal of writing a complete novel (or 50,000 words) in a month, which equates to about 1600 words a day. They plan for a good while before November 1 but only start writing as the clock ticks over from October.

I’ve never done it. I’ve thought about it, I’ve written up a pros and cons list but every year, I put it aside and think next year. And then next year gets here and it scares me too much to do it. This year I contemplated it for about a nano second (see what I did there?) before realising that this year was definitely not going to be my year for it. Finishing off two assignments during November (one of which I handed in today – HOORAY!) was not conducive to getting my head into a novel. Add that to a totally crazy year of moving and new jobs and hating jobs and changing jobs and starting uni and ALL THAT JAZZ and I realised that having one month to myself was not a bad idea. Not committing to something every second of every day was not a bad thing.

So I didn’t register for another year and I’m NOT doing it for me. So this is good. This is me setting boundaries. But it doesn’t mean I’m not writing. I’ve just written three articles for an assignment and I’m going to see about actually submitting them for publication too. The assignment was to pick two online publications and write three articles to suit their style and audience, so in theory, our pieces should be accepted for publication quite easily. My articles were health and fitness related (although truth be told, I’ve fallen off that wagon) and they were pretty good, if I do say so myself. So that’s my aim – to get something published other than my own blogs.

And while I’m not NaNoing, I am going to be involved in another Google+ project – writing Flash Fiction from photo prompts. It’s a bunch of writers who’re not trying to write a novel this month but who still want to write, so that should be good. Less pressure and I’m all about regulating the pressure I put on myself.